Stop giving air to bullies for clicks
By now, most people will have heard of the antics of the person who berated staff at Bunnings – simply because the staff insisted that she wear a mask before entering the store.
As is common these days, the altercation was filmed on someone’s phone and uploaded to social media channels. However, the story also captured the attention of mainstream media. What would normally have been an incident of minor importance soon became a topic of the national conversation – bringing fame (or infamy) to the antagonist.
I do not want to add to this person’s unwarranted celebrity. In part, this is because I do not think people should be rewarded for being rude and aggressive. In part, it is because I do not want to fuel further interest in ideas that are not just wrong – but dangerously so.
Instead, I want to focus on two issues of relevance to the media. First, should oxygen be given to people and ideas that do not deserve the public’s attention? Second, how can we avoid causing unintended harm done to people who have legitimate reasons for not wearing face masks – but who are made to feel like a pariah for not doing so?
The first of these issues is one of general concern. Naturally enough, the media is keen to cover stories that engage the interest of their audience. This is perfectly understandable in a context where maintaining audience numbers is critical to survival. People want to hear about the extraordinary. However, there are times when giving people what they want is not in their interest – a principle that holds for individuals as it does for wider society. An alcoholic might want another drink – but it is not in their interest to give them one!
The world abounds with crackpots, conspiracy theorists – and the like. At one level, it is easy to dismiss them as a part of a radical fringe whose ludicrous beliefs are merely entertaining. However, we should never underestimate the ability of such groups to wheedle their way into the public consciousness – even to the point where what seems to be extreme on one day eventually becomes commonplace … just part of the background beliefs of our time. We have seen this in the case of anti-vaxxers, or the people who believe that infection rates for COVID-19 are linked to 5G telephone towers, or that one’s gender or race determines character … and so on.
As noted above, some of these ideas can be explosive in their effects … with the potential for damage easily predicted. Yet, if the proponents are sufficiently weird, wonderful or compelling, then there is a chance that their views might be amplified by a media seduced by the novelty of what is being presented. This is not to suggest that the media approves of the ideas it promotes. If anything, most outlets probably assume that wacky ideas are pure entertainment – that no one will actually be seduced by ridiculous ideas. Unfortunately, history is full of examples of improbable beliefs becoming embedded in ‘mainstream’ ideologies.
This is not to suggest that the media should never cover stories like the incident at Bunnings. However, I think a decision to tell such a story comes with an additional obligation explicitly to discount the validity of claims that are false and misleading. That is, there are times when just reporting the facts will not be enough. Instead, editorial judgement needs to be brought to bear.
The application of judgement is also required in minimising the unintended, adverse effects of moderating opinion about matters like the wearing of face masks during a rampant pandemic. The person at Bunnings objected to wearing a mask as if to do so was some kind of violation of basic human rights. Those arguments were singularly poor – and potentially dangerous – as they uncritically undercut most efforts to preserve the health and safety of the community. However, there could have been another person – perhaps suffering from a medical condition – for whom not wearing a mask is a matter of necessity (not choice). The arguments of that person deserve to be taken seriously.
While it is important to repudiate the crackpots, we should do so with a care not to inflame public prejudice of a kind that discounts every objection as invalid. Some people have perfectly good reasons for not conforming to accepted norms that are justifiable in general.
The bully at the Bunnings door did little to advance the public debate about the rights and responsibilities of citizens and the community. But perhaps she has done some good – in prompting further reflection about what, when and how the media chooses to amplify through its channels.
This article was first written for, and published by Crikey. It has been republished here with permission.
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Punching up: Who does it serve?
I recently watched Hannah Gadsby’s comedic tour-de-force, Douglas. It is sharp and provocative – but wonderfully insightful. In the course of her performance, Hannah explains that she applies to her humour the principle of ‘punching up’.
It is an approach employed by comics when deciding who is a legitimate target for ridicule and satire. The idea is pretty simple, it’s fine to take aim at someone who is more powerful than you – but never those who are relatively weaker. The operating assumption is that the powerful are unlikely to be harmed by a bit of fun at their expense, while the weaker have suffered enough without having to cope with a comic’s insults.
The idea of ‘punching up’ seems to have taken on a life beyond the world of comedy. More generally, those who stand higher up the ladder of power and privilege are now expected to accept, without retaliation or reproach, whatever comes their way from those located on lower rungs of the ladder. Sitting at the top are cis-gendered, white men, like me. If we complain, then this is just evidence of our ‘thin skin’ and an inability to take a serving of what we have been dishing out for millennia.
It is easy to identify who is currently at the top of the ladder. However, beyond that point, working out the relativities of who is ‘up’ or ‘down’ becomes increasingly difficult. After all, there is no natural hierarchy of power, privilege, disadvantage or subjugation.
Instead, positions change as the wheel of history turns – with some groups ascending at one point only to see their position reversed at another. For example, consider the case of the Aztecs. Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, they commanded an empire built on the conquest, enslavement and ritual sacrifice of those who fell under their sway. Yet, today, their descendants are a dispossessed people with an extraordinarily resilient culture that has survived centuries of attempted suppression by their colonisers.
So, who gets to ‘punch up’ (or be ‘punched’) is relative to time and culture. The role of being a priestess can be at the apex of power and influence in one setting but marginalised in another. A banker can be reviled as a ‘usurer’ in the past only to be celebrated by future generations.
However, that’s not where the relativities end. Conduct that is condoned in one case will be condemned in another – even though the things done are identical. For example, what is praised as being ‘forthright’ in a man has often been criticised as ‘aggression’ in a woman. Asymmetry of judgement also applies in the context of ‘punching up’. Behaviour that is justifiably condemned in a powerful person is often excused or ignored if practiced by a relatively powerless individual.
So, what are we to make of this? First, let’s acknowledge that there are some individuals and groups who have been systematically marginalised, over such a long period of time, as to deserve the opportunity to ‘even things up’ in any contest. Only those blinded by prejudice would deny this to be so.
However, this is not to say that relative historical disadvantage should excuse anything done – just as long as it is directed at the relatively powerful. A person fighting a stronger adversary may pick up a stick to ‘even the odds’ – but it would be wrong for them to attack an unarmed person with a firearm. To do so would involve a disproportionate use of force.
Likewise, I think it wrong to belittle or vilify a person (any person) in a deliberate attempt to wound them with words. That is not comedy – it is abuse. Comics make a person uncomfortable as a way of drawing attention to an issue of underlying importance – but their aim is not (and should not be) to harm. To do otherwise is to adopt the stance of the bully … which is wrong whatever one’s relative position in life.
I realise that it is easy to recommend restraint when one belongs to a powerful or privileged group – as I do. However, I am not a supporter of relativism in ethics (or elsewhere). To wound another – willfully or recklessly – is wrong.
The fact that it occurs as a result of anger or frustration might explain such behaviour – but it does not justify it. I know that this will be a view unpopular with those who have a taste for revenge – who believe in the proverbial ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’. However, I prefer the position of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote that:
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.”
Yes, great wrongs need to be made right – but justice cannot be produced by injustice.
So, does this load the greater obligation onto the shoulders of those who have traditionally been on the wrong end of the stick? On the contrary, those of us who enjoy the greatest power and privilege should accept the greatest obligation to act ethically … not least because we have the capacity to do so.
We should begin by recognising and redressing the disparities of our day; we should acknowledge that we did not earn our privileged position – but were simply lucky enough to be born blessed with opportunity. It is not out of guilt, but with a sense of justice, that we should seek to redress historical and contemporary sources of inequity.
Perhaps then the urge to punch will eventually be assuaged, and something better – that could never have grown in the soil of anger and resentment – can emerge to see the light of day.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Education is more than an employment outcome
This week the Federal Government announced university funding restructures that made a clear statement – to prioritise ‘useful’ degrees.
This decision is significant for a number of reasons. First, it has further shifted the cost of a university education away from government and onto students. It has done so on the assumption that education benefits the individual more than the society to which they contribute.
Second, the government has nominated some courses of study as being more likely to lead to employment than will others. Somewhat paradoxically, the government is reducing the cost of study for those most likely to get jobs, while increasing it for those it thinks will struggle to find employment due to their ill-considered choice of subjects. ‘Cost’ is deliberately unrelated to ‘ability to pay’ – and requires those with apparently poor employment prospects to subsidise the education of their more fortunate peers.
It’s clear that the government hopes market forces will encourage more people to take on ‘useful’ courses of study. However, in a further ironic twist, the new policy relies on the fact that many people will not. Otherwise, the economics won’t work. Fortunately (for the policy) there will be limited places available for the study of ‘useful’ courses in nursing, teaching and agriculture. This means that some of the students who rationally seek a ‘good deal’ will be forced to accept their ‘second choice’ – even to the point of having to suffer through a relatively expensive ‘dead-end’ degree in the Humanities.
However, this piece is not meant to be an examination of the paradoxes of government policy. Rather, I want to look at a deeper issue – the underlying assumption that resources are best invested in ‘useful’ things.
Demonstrating ‘usefulness’
This thinking stalks my waking hours – as it probably does anyone running an organisation that is not immediately and demonstratively ‘useful’. For those of us working in the not for profit world, the word ‘useful’ is never used. In its place is the notion of ‘impact’. Conventional wisdom dictates that one must demonstrate impact – or die!
The thinking that drives a demand to measure, report on and invest in ‘impact’ is the same thinking that leads a government to focus its investment in higher education on supporting courses that lead to the ‘jobs of the future’. With limited taxpayer and philanthropic dollars to spend, why not invest in those things that can prove themselves most effective? It’s easy to argue that this is the rational thing to do… but is it?
What is the ‘impact’ of Bell Shakespeare staging King Lear? What is the ‘impact’ of the National Gallery of Australia hanging Blue Poles? What is the impact of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas? I think it impossible to trace the impact of any of these works. We can measure outputs – the number of attendances, mentions in the media, donations received, and so on. But these numbers don’t identify the ideas or experiences seeded in the theatre, a gallery or at a festival that germinate – perhaps years later – and change the world.
Ideas can change the world
We underestimate the value of things like philosophy when assessed over the long term. Nearly every branch of knowledge that we draw on today including science, mathematics, economics, medicine and psychology were thought into existence by philosophers.
People motivated by nothing more than a love of wisdom (philo-sophia) have changed the world. The original concept of the atom came from Democritus. Pythagoras brought us the role of constants in mathematics. The classification of species began from Aristotle. Thomas Hobbes ideated the modern nation state. Adam Smith brought us the free market and Peter Singer animal rights. With the benefit of hindsight, their impact is obvious. But few of the world’s great philosophers could have demonstrated ‘impact’ while working on their seminal ideas.
I understand the strong desire to measure impact, to invest in making a tangible difference. I understand why governments want to fund ‘practical outcomes’ such as helping people to secure future employment. However, there is something deeply irrational about turning one’s back on forms of education and endeavour that emphatically shape the world – but at a pace and by means we cannot easily measure.
If ‘impact’ is the only measure of something’s worth, then we might as well close down the arts, the humanities, and a whole lot more. However, this would be to deny a fundamental truth that has informed all great societies: some things matter not because of their impact – but in and of themselves.
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
Ethics in your inbox.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
If we’re going to build a better world, we need a better kind of ethics
At times of global crisis, it’s very tempting for moral philosophers to get an over-inflated sense of self-importance. Those who have dedicated their life to reasoning through matters of complexity – justice, rights, liberty and the rest – suddenly feel uniquely placed to make sense of what’s happening.
When philosophers intervene effectively in public debate, it’s often lauded as a breath of fresh air. If I had a dollar for every time someone had suggested I teach ethics to politicians, I wouldn’t need to teach anyone ever again.
Last week, Jared Field, a University of Melbourne mathematician and Gomeroi man argued in The Guardian that the recent destruction of the Juukan Gorge cave by Rio Tinto revealed the need for students of STEM to be trained in ethical reasoning.
Having myself argued for the need to include ethics within STEM, I desperately want to agree with Field. But in order for ethicists to provide the kind of education he hopes for, one in which scientists ask “am I being a good ancestor?”, the field of ethics first needs to reckon with its own history. Moral philosophers, as it turns out, don’t have the best ancestors.
Ethics, a branch of philosophy, is an intellectual tradition and an academic discipline that, like any other, has a history of sexism, racism and complicity with oppressive systems and regimes.
In the wake of the protests and riots following the killing of George Floyd, the solidarity that has been sparked across the globe, and the more targeted protests regarding Aboriginal deaths in custody here in Australia, I’ve started wondering about the legacy of the discipline. To follow Field’s line of questioning – what do ethicists have to do to ensure they’re being good ancestors?
I’m beginning to worry that some of the most basic ways we think and ‘reason’ (more on that word soon) about ethics, has a role in legitimising the very violence that ethicists and moral philosophers then seek to condemn.
This isn’t true of all philosophy – but it is typical of an approach that holds a lot of traction today because of its association with some of the most widely-known (and more importantly, widely taught) philosophers in history. It’s a notion of philosophy that sees it as an entirely rational exercise of developing and applying theories, ideas and frameworks in a vacuum.
This vacuum is meant to be liberating. It’s designed to be transcendental – elevating our ideas above what things appear to be so that we can articulate things as they really are, or as they should be. It’s from this vacuum that we get thought experiments and concepts like the trolley dilemma, the state of nature and the veil of ignorance. It’s also where we get a whole lot of applied ethical frameworks, like just war theory in military ethics, quality-adjusted life yields (QALY’s) in medical ethics and ‘use of force’ doctrines in policing ethics.
These theoretical frameworks provide us with a universal sense of what, for example, the ‘just’ use of police force looks like. To be considered ‘just’ (in Australia, at least) the use of force needs to be necessary, proportionate, reasonable, in pursuit of a legitimate goal and must aim to de-escalate or minimise harm.
When you run through these criteria as a list, it gives the sense of something comprehensive – that we could apply this framework to all cases and make some kind of reasonable judgement about whether the use of force is ethical or not. These approaches provide consistency, impartiality and at their best, capture something essential about the moral considerations at the heart of what’s at stake.
However, they also risk pulling the wool over our eyes, because they ask us to assume that when two people walk into this neat thought experiment, they too are transcendent. Their historical baggage, political status, social standing and whatever else defines their lived experience isn’t something to be wrestled with. Instead, the particularities of their lives and histories are something to be transcended.
What this means in the context of policing is that the very question of whether the police – as they have come to operate and function in a society – are legitimate or not is outside the scope of questioning. It means it falls to us to determine whether someone’s previous criminal status – itself likely intertwined with systemic injustices, social disadvantage and oppression – justifies a greater level of force, you know, because it’s proportional to the ‘greater threat’. The question ends, by accident or design, before we ask what role the colour of a person’s skin might have played in determining that use of force.
Philosopher and health researcher Bryan Mukandi describes this as a tendency to treat ethical decisions as an “atemporal phenomenon,” removing ethical decisions from the history that must inform them. It’s a phenomenon we have seen play out in the COVID-19 pandemic. Two patients arrive in need of a ventilator – one has promising health outcomes, the other doesn’t. The ventilator goes, according to many medical ethicists, to the one who promises better outcomes.
However, Mukandi points out that this, by design, overlooks the potential that the reason one person faces worse outcomes is because of a series of injustices they have experienced over the course of their life. Injustices that are not merely ignored at the moment of crisis, but which are relitigated against the person by denying them the same healthcare they have been denied again and again.
The false belief that ethics is an atemporal phenomenon has also been at work in the backlash against the Black Lives Matter protests around the globe. Conditioned to compare instances of violence only in the present, critics look at two instances of violence and treat them as equivalent. They have, by design, removed the most relevant factor – a history of deliberate, systemic violence and racism inflicted by one party on the other.
In so doing, they simultaneously rewrite the reality of the situation and claim some intellectual high ground, because they are the ones playing by the rules of rational thinking and reason. They are all too quick to spot an apparent contradiction in the logic of the other side after they’ve framed the terms of the debate and defined what matters and what doesn’t in their own way.
This is not a new tactic. It’s perhaps the earliest strategy in the colonial tool kit. Perhaps the best-known thought experiment in political philosophy concerns the ‘state of nature’, where we consider what life would be like if human society existed with no laws, no government, no organised systems of co-operation whatsoever.
The state of nature is meant to reveal how and why humans might wish to enter into society at all. Conveniently, most accounts of the state of nature – written by white men from European and British backgrounds – revealed the natural society to emerge from a state of nature to be a distinctly Eurocentric one.
The British philosopher John Locke developed his influential account of property ownership, based on European agricultural practices and the idea that land had to be tilled and settled to be owned. This way of thinking played a role in allowing colonists to see lands like Australia as unowned – as terra nullius. Philosopher Olly Thorn describes this as the practice of interpreting difference as absence. Different approaches to property, government and society were interpreted as lesser, or non-existent.
Far from discovering some universal truths by transcending the world, the philosophers I idolised as an undergrad (and to an extent, still do) simply gave their own world view the veneer of universality and in doing so, became available to launder white supremacy, colonialism and genocide.
They weren’t alone in this. Colonialism wasn’t invented by the British Empire. Nor was racism discovered during the Enlightenment. Other cultures and times have been guilty of similar crimes. However, what is distinct is the tendency to look for answers in the European thinkers who gave intellectual cover and license to the very evils we are now trying to address.
Jamaican political philosopher Charles Mills, wrote famously that at the end of the day, “a lot of philosophy is just white guys jerking off”. Often it fails to address real issues, and when it does, “the emphases are in the wrong place; or crucial facts are omitted, making the whole discussion pointless.”
If philosophers are to be good ancestors, we need to be honest about the legacy we’ve inherited from our own. We need to reckon with our unspoken tendency to accept an approach that is comfortable with erasing history. That requires a conscious choice to reconsider methods that focus on what’s happening now and what might happen in the future at the expense of the past. It means ensuring that we no longer overlook, or forgive, the racism, sexism and other moral failings of almost all the giants of our field.
Protestors and rioters have been criticised for destroying private property, invoking the very same intellectual concepts that were used to justify stealing Indigenous lands in the first place. They have been told to prosecute their arguments in a ‘marketplace of ideas’, invoking notions of liberty from John Stuart Mill, a man who believed only white people were truly capable of liberty. Failing to address the history of these ideas has seen us relitigating them in the same old ways, denying opportunities to refine, repurpose or replace these ideas with better ones.
Philosopher Kate Manne recently tweeted that “It is really striking at this moment how little talk there’s been of reforming philosophy departments. Our whiteness is overwhelming and deeply problematic.” I think Jared Field is right to think that a better curriculum might give us some hope looking forward.
But if we are going to start addressing social change in the curriculum, we first need to address the people writing it, and the thinkers in it.
Image credit: WikiCommons
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
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BY Matthew Beard
Matt is a moral philosopher with a background in applied and military ethics. In 2016, Matt won the Australasian Association of Philosophy prize for media engagement. Formerly a fellow at The Ethics Centre, Matt is currently host on ABC’s Short & Curly podcast and the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship Program Director.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
In the face of such generosity, how can racism still exist?
Is there any polite or moderate way to condemn racism? I think not. Nor should there be. As the world has witnessed, on countless occasions, racism kills. It does so for the worst of all possible reasons – by denying the equal humanity of some people simply because of the colour of their skin.
The evil caused by racism is not ‘theoretical’. We do not need to speculate about the horrors that it has unleashed. We have only to listen to the evidence of the enslaved, the dispossessed and the murdered to know what follows when one group of people is thought to be ‘less fully human’ than another.
Some people are upset by the words ‘Black Lives Matter’. They assert an alternative proposition that, ‘All Lives Matter’. Well, of course they do. But that has never been denied by the BLM movement. BLM does not claim that only black lives matter. They do not say that black lives matter more than any other.
They simply state that black lives also matter – in a way that racism denies. And they are right. They might also ask, ‘where were the people chanting ‘All Lives Matter’ when the ‘original sin’ of racism was being visited on the world?’. Why has the ‘All Lives Matter’ brigade only found its voice now that the spotlight has been turned on the oppressors by the oppressed?
I come from a privileged background. So, I can barely imagine what it must be like to be on the wrong end of the racist scourge. I can only guess at my reaction – probably a burning rage at the sheer injustice of my treatment. Like the Rev’d. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr – I would demand to be judged for the quality of my character rather than the colour of my skin. Denied that right, I would let loose my rage on an unjust world and those who represent the system that denied me the most basic form of dignity.
So, it eclipses all understanding to find that, in my experience, the vast majority of Indigenous Australians who have experienced racism are, in fact, amongst the most generous and accepting of people. Yes, there are angry firebrands. However, rather than replicate the wrongs they have suffered or become like those who have denied their humanity, most of those affected choose to repudiate racism by accepting others for who they are and not how they seem.
I speak of this from direct experience. A few days after my seventeenth birthday, I arrived on Groote Eylandt – the home of the Anindilyakwa people of East Arnhem Land and the Gulf of Carpentaria. This was the mid-1970s and the racism directed towards the local mob was common, open and shameless. I doubt that those involved would consider themselves as deliberately being racist. If anything, their racism was almost ‘casual’ in character – a product of ignorance, prejudice and ingrained habits of mind.
It’s hard to explain exactly how and why my experience was so different – perhaps it was my young age or a lucky accident … I really do not know. Whatever the reasons, a few of the Aboriginal men took me under their wing. Friendships developed and eventually I was given a skin name and inducted into a network of kinship ties that I value to this day. The point is that if you were to meet me ‘in the flesh’ you would simply see a middle-aged, white male. As far as I know, I have no genetic ties to the people of Groote. Yet, their acceptance of me has been complete and unconditional.
I have often questioned my experience – wondering if I might have invented a narrative to match an idealized version of myself. However, improbable as it might seem, the connections are real. I will never forget spending an evening with two members of the Amagula Clan (a brother and sister) who explained their kinship connection to me (I carry a Lalara name). Eventually, they simply placed their hands over my heart – to tell me that the colour of my skin, my ‘outward form’, did not matter. That this is not what they saw when they looked at me … but something altogether different. Both are dead – dying far earlier than would have been the case if Australia had been settled on more just terms.
My experience is not unique. Indeed, I believe that our First Nations people are willing to embrace anyone who cares to be open to their doing so. All that is asked is that there be a recognition of simple truths about our relationship to each other and to all that belongs to and is part of the country of which we form equal parts.
In the face of such generosity of spirit – how can we possibly allow racism to persist?
IMAGE CREDIT: The image displayed in this article is a painting by Alfred Lalara (deceased), a talented Groote Eylandt artist. The title is Angurugu River.
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
Ethics in your inbox.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
The ethics of tearing down monuments
In the UK and US and other nations around the world, public monuments dedicated to people who have profited from or perpetuated slavery and racism are being torn down by demonstrators and public authorities who sympathise with the justice of their cause.
Statues of Christopher Columbus, Edward Colston, King Leopold II and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are amongst those toppled in protest.
What are we to make of these acts? In particular, who should decide the fate of such monuments – and according to what criteria?
By their very nature, statues are intended to honour those they depict. They elevate both the likeness and the reputation of their subject – conferring a kind of immortality denied to those of us who simply fade away in both form and memory.
So, the decision to raise a statue in a public place is a serious matter. The choice reveals much about the ethical sensibilities of those who commission the work. Such a work is a public declaration that a particular person, through their character and deeds, is deserving of public commemoration.
There are six criteria that should be used to evaluate the public standing of a particular life. These can be applied at the time of commissioning a monument or retrospectively when determining if such a commemoration is justified.
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They must not be associated with any gateway acts
Are there aspects of the person’s conduct that are so heinous as to rule them out, irrespective of any other achievement that might merit celebration? For example, one would not honour a genocidal mass murderer, even if the rest of their life was marked by the most profoundly positive achievements. There are some deeds that are so wrong as to be beyond rectification.
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Their achievements must be exceptionally noteworthy
Did they significantly exceed the achievements of others in relevantly similar circumstances? For example, we should note that most statues recognise the achievements of people who were born into conditions of relative privilege. The outstanding achievements of the marginalised and oppressed are, for the most part, barely noticed, let alone celebrated.
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Their work must have served the public good
Did the person pursue ends that were noble and directed to the public good? For example, was the person driven by greed and a desire for personal enrichment – but just happened to increase the common good along the way?
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The means by which they achieved their work must be ethical
Were the means employed by the person ethically acceptable? For example, did the person benefit some by denying the intrinsic dignity of others (through enslavement, etc)?
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They must be the principal driver of the outcomes associated with their deeds
Is the person responsible for the good and evil that flowed from their deeds? Are they a principal driver of change? Or have others taken their ideas and work and used them for good or ill? It is important that we neither praise nor blame people for outcomes that they would never have intended but were the inadvertent product of their work. In those cases, we should not gloss over the truth of what happened. But if they otherwise deserve to be honoured for their achievements, then these should not be deemed ‘tainted’ by the deeds of others.
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The monument must contribute positively to the public commons
Would the creation of the monument be a positive contribution to the public commons, or is it likely to become a site of unproductive strife and dissension? In considering this, does the statue perform a role beyond celebrating a particular person and their life? Is it emblematic of some deeper truth in history that should be acknowledged and debated? Not every public monument should be a source of joy and consensus. Some play a useful role if they prompt debate and even remorse.
It will be noted that five of the six criteria relate to the life of the individual who is commemorated. Only the sixth criterion looks beyond the person to the wider good of society. However, this is an important consideration given that we are thinking, here, specifically about statues displayed in public places.
The retrospective application of this criteria is precisely what is happening ‘on the streets’ at the moment. The trouble is that the popular response is often more visceral than considered – and this sparks deeper concerns amongst citizens who are ready to embrace change … but only if it is principled and orderly.
Of course, asking frustrated and angry people to be ‘principled and orderly’ in their response to oppression is unlikely to produce a positive response. That’s why I think it important for civic authorities to take responsibility for addressing such questions, and to do so proactively.
This was recently demonstrated by the Borough of Tower Hamlets that removed the statue of slave owner Robert Milligan from its plinth at West India Quay in London’s Docklands. As the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, noted: “it’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade – but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces”.
UPDATE: The statue of slave trader Robert Milligan has now been removed from West India Quay.
It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade – but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces. #BlackLivesMatterpic.twitter.com/ca98capgnQ
— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) June 9, 2020
What does all of this mean for Australia? There will be considerable debate about what statues should be removed. I will leave it to others to apply the criteria outlined above. However, the issue is not just about the statues we take down.
What of those we fail to erect? Who have we failed to honour? For example, have we missed an opportunity to recognise people like Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy whose resistance to European occupation was every bit as heroic as that of the British Queen Boudica. Two warrior-leaders – the latter celebrated; the other not. The absence is eloquent.
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
A new guide for SME's to connect with purpose
Purpose, values and principles are the bedrock of every thriving organisation. With many facing a reset right now, we’ve released a guide to help small to medium sized businesses create a road map for good decisions and robust culture.
In the world of architecture, even the most magnificent building is only as strong as its foundations. The same can be said for organisations. In these times of constant change, a strong ethical culture is essential to achieving superior, long-term performance – driving behaviour, innovation, and every decision from hiring, through to partnerships and customer service.
The foundations for a high-performance culture are made up of three principal components: Purpose, Values and Principles.
Each is necessary. Each plays a specific role. Each complements the other to make a stable foundation for the whole. Together, they make up what we call an Ethics Framework.
PURPOSE (WHY) – An organisation’s reason for being.
Purpose explains the WHY; it is the reason an organisation exists and what it was set up to do or achieve. It’s a defining expression of what your organisation stands for in the world and why it matters.
VALUES (WHAT) – What is good.
Values shape the WHAT; they are the things that an organisation believes are good and worth pursuing. Values guide actions, activities and behaviours within an organisations by identifying what is of merit.
PRINCIPLES (HOW) – What is right.
Principles determine the HOW; helping to guide how an organisation obtains the things it thinks are good. If Values tell an organisation what to pursue, Principles tell them how they should go about getting those things.
The Ethics Centre has spent the past thirty years helping organisations to build and strengthen their ethical foundations. In many cases, we have been able to work directly with organisations. However, not every organisation has either the time or the funds needed to invest in specialist advice.
So, the Centre was pleased to accept a grant from The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s Community Benefit Fund for the purpose of creating a ‘DIY Guide’ for ethics frameworks – with a special focus on the needs of small to medium-sized businesses. It goes beyond broad theory to offer practical, step-by-step guidance to anyone wanting to define and apply their own Purpose, Values and Principles.
The publication of this guide comes at an especially important time. The current pandemic is testing organisations as never before.
Indeed, COVID-19 is every bit as dangerous as an earthquake – except, in this case, it is the ethical foundations of organisations that will determine whether they stand or fall. In a time of crisis, weak foundations are susceptible to crumble, opening up an organisation to the risk it will make ‘bad’ decisions that will ultimately cost it dearly.
The Ethics Centre believes that prevention is better than cure. Our hope is that the practical guidance offered by this guide will provide owners and managers with the tools they need to build stronger, better businesses.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
FODI launches free interactive digital series
FODI Digital, announced today, is an exciting series of free, online conversations to be live-streamed on May 9 and 10.
The line-up will feature a selection of the international and Australian speakers originally slated for the live festival that was cancelled, by government order, as the COVID-19 lockdown came into effect last month.
“The theme for 2020’s live festival was Dangerous Realities and we seem to well and truly have encountered one. Critical thinking is essential, especially as we isolate further from our communities, families and global neighbours.” said Festival Director, Danielle Harvey.
Executive Director of The Ethics Centre and Co-Founder of FODI Simon Longstaff says FODI digital is a timely invitation to think critically.
“We may submit to a lockdown of our bodies, but never our minds. If ever there was a time to test the boundaries of our thinking … it is today!”
The series of online conversations takes inspiration from the original FODI 2020 theme of ‘Dangerous Realities’, with online sessions being streamed via the festival website. The series will interrogate the reality of the current pandemic and its wider implications for our world and society.
Audiences can contribute questions live while the discussions take place.
For Festival Director Danielle Harvey, there’s never been a more important time for these critical conversations. “Decisions are being made at every level that will shape how we live our lives both now and in the future.
“While we can’t present the program in the way originally planned, these digital conversations will address topics that really need to be put under the microscope. COVID-19 will hopefully end at some point, and understanding what kind of world we will then be entering is essential.”
Sessions include:
- The Truth About China – Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is joined by journalists Peter Hartcher and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, with Human Rights Watch researcher Yaqiu Wang, and strategist Jason Yat-Sen Li, in a wide-ranging discussion about China;
- The Future Is History – Russian-American journalist, high-profile LGBTQI activist and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Masha Gessen, shares her thoughts on Russia and the coming US elections;
- Snap Back To Reality – Philosopher Simon Longstaff leads a discussion with social researcher Rebecca Huntley, political journalist Stan Grant, and fellow philosopher Tim Soutphommasane, on the social shifts, policy and economic consequences that await us in a post-COVID-19 world;
- States of Surveillance – Futurist Mark Pesce, 3A Institute data expert Ellen Broad, and founder of Old Ways, New Angie Abdilla discuss the issue of digital surveillance for virus tracking and the potential threat posed by the ‘normalisation’ of government surveillance;
- Misinformation Is Infectious – First Draft’s Claire Wardle, tech journalist Ariel Bogle discuss COVID-19-related conspiracy theories and what they tell us about technology’s role in the spread of damaging misinformation;
- Stolen Inheritance – Australian youth leaders, Daisy Jeffrey, Audrey Mason-Hyde and Dylan Storer discuss their concerns for the world they will inherit: a world of debt, educational disadvantage, diminished job opportunities, climate catastrophe and … future pandemics;
- The Ethics of the Pandemic – Philosophers Matt Beard, Eleanor Gordon-Smith and Bryan Mukandi take a step back from the day-to-day dilemmas of the pandemic to try to understand what’s really going on, the lessons we learn and the hidden costs of the choices we make;
- Political Correct-Mess – Conservative Australian commentator Kevin Donnelly, journalist Chris Kenny, and journalist Osman Faruqi join journalist Sarah Dingle to dissect political correctness and ask, “Has it gone too far?”;
- Ageing is a Disease – Biologist David Sinclair talks about cracking and reversing the ageing process, which may help the elderly in their fight against a range of diseases and viruses.
The event will live stream straight from The Festival of Dangerous Ideas website across May 9-10. Visit www.festivalofdangerousideas.com to view the program.
You can contact The Ethics Centre about any of the issues discussed in this article. We offer free counselling for individuals via Ethi-call; professional fee-for-service consulting, leadership and development services; and as a non-profit charity we rely heavily on donations to continue our work, which can be made via our website. Thank you.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas has been regrettably cancelled
It was at the last Festival of Dangerous Ideas in November 2018, that our keynote speaker – celebrated writer, actor and bon vivant Stephen Fry – made the prophetic statement, “It’s not dangerous ideas that should concern us, it’s dangerous realities.”
We liked the line so much we used it as the theme for our tenth festival, scheduled to take place at Sydney Town Hall on 3-5 April. But as of today, we’re devastated to advise that the Festival won’t be happening. Like thousands of other events, ours may no longer proceed following the NSW Government’s (Minister of Health) ban of non-essential gatherings of 500 people or more.
Faced with the rapidly evolving situation around COVID-19 and relying on the best available medical advice, this is a possibility we’ve been grappling with, and agonising over, for the last two weeks – until the point where the choice was taken from our hands.
Although this decision is an incredible blow, the health of our audience, staff, speakers, artists and the wider public, is what matters most.
For some ticket holders, this cancellation will probably come as a relief. There’s already a high level of anxiety in the community about attending events of any kind. In the greater scheme of things, missing a couple of festival sessions – or a night at the theatre – is no more than a minor inconvenience. It might also be experienced as a reprieve for the speakers who were booked to travel halfway around the world to attend the Festival; navigating travel bans and the risk of illness, flight delays or mandatory quarantine periods to do so.
FODI takes many months – and thousands of hours – of creativity and painstaking human effort to become reality. If you had attended the festival, you would have heard from over 50 speakers, including exiled activist Edward Snowden (no stranger to self-isolation), climate change journalist, David Wallace-Wells, the celebrated Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, and technology critic, Evgeny Morozov. You would have heard Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton was to talk about her experience in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Australian history. And you would have encountered the extraordinary contrarian, Roxane Gay.
Beyond talks – and in the realm of the arts – you could have engaged with a remarkable new work called Unforgivable, featuring youth activists and a young 18-person strong indigenous choir. There was also going to be an opportunity for anyone to interact with PIG – a giant transparent piggybank into which people could donate (or withdraw) money in the full glare of public scrutiny. PIG was to have sat outside the QVB in the heart of Sydney for an entire week, prompting conversation about generosity and the hierarchy of human needs. It’s a conversation that has taken on a new relevance, today.
Major events like ours operate on a financial knife-edge. Just breaking even is a challenge in the best of times. So, the cancellation of FODI is not only heart-breaking. It also risks being financially crippling. Given this, we are asking our supporters, sponsors and ticket holders to consider donating their contributions to The Ethics Centre. Every cent will help us survive this financial upheaval and carry on our work.
If you would like to support The Ethics Centre, you can do so here.
Personally, our team is dealing with a deep sense of disappointment – that something we’ve been working towards for a long time, is now never going to happen.
That said, although we are down, we are definitely not out! FODI will be back – its tenth anniversary merely postponed until better times. It’s the original festival for stroppy people who want to push the boundaries. And it remains the best!
We thank all of our speakers, staff, supporters and ticket holders for their patience and understanding.
This dangerous reality arrived ahead of schedule.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Respect for persons lost in proposed legislation
The Ethics Centre is a strong supporter of human rights. As such, we agree with the principal purpose of the draft Religious Discrimination Bill (2019) legislation – which is to outlaw discrimination against all persons on the basis of their religion. However, we also argue that the exposure draft is deficient in a number of important ways.
We recently made a submission articulating these concerns in response to the second exposure draft of the proposed legislation.
Core to the submission is our belief that human rights form a whole and are indivisible. That is, we are disinclined to support legislation that creates broad, general exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination. This is especially so when the proposed exceptions risk abrogating the human rights of one group in favour of another.
It’s important to make it clear that the Centre’s approach is not based on a naïve belief that human rights cohere without tension. We know that this is not the case – and understand that religion is, by its very nature, a special case.
This flows from the fact that every religion makes rival, exclusive and absolute truth claims that resist any form of independent evaluation.
Add to this religion’s appeal to transcendent authority, its inclination to order the lives of its adherents and the emotional and spiritual investment it requires of individual and communal belief – and it’s not surprising that difficulties arise not only between religions but in connection with the expression of other human rights.
Our submission seeks to affirm the universal principle of ‘respect for persons’ and to propose criteria for limiting (without totally restricting) the extent to which religious belief can be used as a justification for discrimination.
‘Respect for persons’ is the ethical requirement that we each recognise the intrinsic dignity of every other person – irrespective of their, gender, sex, race, religion, age … or any other non-relevant discriminator. It is this principle that underpins all human rights – and cannot be set aside without undermining the whole edifice.
Given this, we argue that any exception to the prohibition of discrimination that is accorded to people of faith must be severely restricted. That is, lawful discrimination, by people of faith, must only be allowed to the extent strictly necessary to avoid material harm to the religious sensibilities of those affected.
In short: we set a very high bar for those seeking to discriminate against others in the name of religion.
For example, there is a good case for allowing a religious school to discriminate against a person seeking employment as its Principal while concurrently rejecting the religious beliefs that inform the school’s defining ethos.
However, there is no good reason for applying such a test to the employment of a member of the same school’s maintenance team. Nor is there any justification for discriminating against a person based, say, on their sexual orientation if, in all other respects, the person aligns with the religious beliefs of the school – as understood by a significant number of believers.
This brings us to another aspect of the Centre’s submission – that discrimination based on religion only be allowed where there is broad consensus, amongst the faithful, that a belief is a legitimate expression of their religion. This should help avoid giving protection to those who occupy the extreme fringes of religious belief.
Finally, none of the above should be read as justifying restrictions on religious belief. On the contrary, we support the right of people to believe whatever they like. Furthermore, we encourage people to act in accordance with a well-informed (and well-formed) conscience.
We also urge people to realise that to act in good conscience entails the possibility of being punished if your conduct is found to be contrary to law. Such is the case of conscientious objectors who resist conscription into the armed forces, or Roman Catholic priests who choose to respect the ‘seal of the confessional’ even if the law compels them to disclose specified admissions by penitents.
This is the balance that a society needs to maintain: respecting the moral courage of those whose religious beliefs compel them to act in a manner that society must prohibit for the sake of all.
For those who are interested, The Ethics Centre’s submission on the proposed legislation will be published by the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department in due course.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”